In modern times, distilling is more closely associated with Kentucky
than Tennessee. Yet the two remaining producers of Tennessee sour
mash whiskey, Jack Daniel and George Dickel, represent a much
larger industry that was from earliest settlement an important
contributor to the state's economic development. A study of the
rise, fall, and re-emergence of Tennessee distilleries will demonstrate
this industry's substantial and complex role in Tennessee's economic
and political history.

The process of converting corn and small grains such as rye and
barley into whiskey was well known to the predominantly Scots,
Scotch-Irish, and Irish immigrants who poured into the Tennessee
country from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North and South Carolina.
Evan Shelby's East Tennessee distillery, located at Sapling Grove
near Shelby's Station on the Holston, was in existence by 1771
and perhaps the earliest on record in the state.1 By
1785 East Tennesseans were producing significant quantities of
rye whiskey which they used to pay taxes at only two shillings,
six pence per gallon.

Middle Tennessee was close behind. In 1787 the Red Heifer, a combined
distillery and tavern, was established in Nashville by John "King"
Boyd.2 In October of 1792, Indians burned Frederick
Stump's distillery, but by 1795-96 he was producing 600 gallons
with four stills, on which he paid taxes of $41.93.3
By 1799 there were sixty-one stills for less than 4,000 people
in Davidson County, according to records kept by John Overton,
who was then serving as Supervisor of Internal Revenue for the
District of Tennessee.4

Both East and Middle Tennessee were well suited for the production
of whiskey, having good soil for growing corn, an abundance of
firewood, white oak for the manufacture of barrels, and a good
network of rivers upon which to ship the whiskey to marketing
centers like Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville, Memphis, and beyond.
Many Tennesseans shipped their whiskey by flatboat to Natchez
where it brought $2 a gallon, twice the going price in Nashville.
On the farm the mash was fed to hogs and cattle which, in the
form of salted meat and hides, were also suitable for export.

Always the demand exceeded the supply. As one old-timer said in
more recent years, "They never did charge enough for it."5
To the frontiersman, whiskey was more than a drink; it was an
anesthetic, disinfectant, and either a stimulant or a tranquilizer,
depending on the situation and the individual. Andrew Jackson
even advised his old friend John Coffee, who was suffering from
arthritis, to bathe himself in whiskey.6

During the Revolution and after, soldiers were partially paid
in whiskey and expected their half pint daily. Most of it was
consumed straight or mixed with sugar and water as a today. Although
whiskey consumption was high, Harriette Simpson Arnow concludes
in Flowering of the Cumberland that drunkenness was frowned
on and relatively uncommon on the Tennessee frontier.7

Nonetheless, it should be noted that with the same Act of the
Assembly establishing the Davidson County Court in 1784 another
act was passed specifying that because of the shortage of grain
there should be no distillation of alcohol in Davidson County.
This act did not long remain in effect. Apparently it was passed
at the instigation of General James Robertson, an early temperance
advocate who argued that, no matter how large the supply of grain,
its conversion into whiskey was "an unwarranted perversion-unserviceable
to white men, devilish for Indians."8

As the frontier gave way to settlement, whiskey consumption increased,
not only in Tennessee, but also throughout the nation. By 1810,
14,191 registered distilleries were producing 25.5 million gallons
of whiskey, a five-fold increase over statistics for 1792.9
Registration fees for the distilleries were high enough to discourage
small private producers; increasingly what had begun as a home
industry became a more large-scale industry, with some farm producers
in some counties making the transition.

As production increased, so did consumption and drunkenness. Congregationalists
and Quakers in New England and Pennsylvania were the first to
oppose the use of whiskey altogether. Fledgling temperance and
prohibition movements spread south and west, to be carried over
the mountains to the earliest settlements by Methodist circuit
riders like Bishop Francis Asbury, who first visited Tennessee
in 1788.10

In 1829 the first temperance societies were established in Tennessee,
with support increasing in the 1830s and 40s. In 1848 the legislature
chartered the Sons and Daughters of Temperance, the strongest
temperance group in the state. The movement scarcely had gotten
started when the threat of war diverted attention from it, but
the groundwork had been laid.

In the interim, Tennesseans were not only consuming more alcohol
but they were becoming major producers as well. In 1820 the Fourth
Census showed that New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Tennessee
had more capital invested and employed more men in the production
of spirits than any other states in the Union.11 The
industry continued to grow right up until the Civil War, gradually
becoming concentrated in certain areas. One of these was Robertson
County, extending north of Davidson County to the Kentucky line.

During the war, occupying Union forces banned the distillation
of whiskey because corn and other grains were needed to feed both
humans and livestock. In Robertson County, distilling was one
of the first businesses to start up after Federal troops pulled
out in April of 1865. It was late spring, the favored season for
distilling. Limestone water, corn, and firewood were readily available
and a still could be set up easily and cheaply. It seemed as though
nearly everyone in the county went into making whiskey for the
simple reason that it was the fastest way to make money and required
virtually no capital.

A major advantage was the fine reputation that Robertson County
distillers such as Wiley Woodard already enjoyed. The 249 gallons
of whiskey Woodard shipped to Lyon & Company in Nashville
on September 21, 1865, commanded $3.75 a gallon, compared to forty
cents a gallon before the war.12 Clearly his success
would have been a stimulus to other producers.

Although Woodard continued to produce the finest Robertson County
whiskey and apple and peach brandies, his production was eventually
surpassed by aggressive new contenders, many of whom were his
relatives. By 1874, these and other Robertson County distillers
were producing 45,000 barrels of whiskey annually. They consumed
so much corn that it became necessary to import large amounts
from St. Louis and other markets. Before the war, there had been
no wholesale whiskey dealers in Springfield, but by 1874 the business
had grown to nearly one million dollars in annual sales. The barrel
business that had grown up at Coopertown now produced $125,000
in business annually. In 1872 the Springfield National Bank was
established to cater to the liquor industry. Because of the whiskey
deposits-the average deposit was over $100,000-the newly established
bank never wavered during the financial panic of 1873.

The Robertson County distillery that grew to be the largest was
located at Greenbrier. When it was started about 1867 by Charles
Palmer of Springfield, its capacity was a modest five gallons
a day. In 1870, Charles Nelson, a native of Mecklenburg, Germany,
who had come to Nashville from Cincinnati, bought it to supply
his wholesale grocery business in Nashville (at that time grocers
sold whiskey). The whiskey was manufactured in Robertson County,
but it was both bottled under the Greenbrier label and distributed
from his Nashville warehouse on Second Avenue North. At its peak,
the distillery employed a work force of fifteen to twenty-five
men, including government inspectors and gaugers as well as the
operators. By 1885 the Greenbrier Distillery manufactured 8,000
barrels of whiskey or a little less than 380,000 gallons a year,
and paid annual taxes of over $341,000.

In 1886 the Nashville Union reported that the distilling
industry was the largest manufacturing industry in the state of
Tennessee, annually consuming 750,000 bushels of corn and 500,000
bushels of apples and peaches. By the late 1880s, however, the
industry had begun to decline. Smaller and less successful distillers
had gone into other businesses, faced with intense competition
from the larger distillers on the one hand, and mounting pressure
from church and temperance groups on the other. The Women's Christian
Temperance Union had organized in the state in 1874 and would
be joined by the Anti-Saloon League in 1899.13

In Robertson County, by 1894, only five distilleries were still
depositing whiskey in warehouses, and two of those were run by
widows: Louisa Nelson for Charles Nelson's Greenbrier Distillery,
and Josephine Woodard Brown for J. S. Brown Distilleries on Wartrace
Creek. As the distilleries closed down, the distillers or their
families tended to transfer their considerable assets into banking.

In 1903, the Adams Law, which extended the Four Mile Law first
passed in 1877 to towns of 5,000, closed the saloons of Springfield.14
In 1909, with the state-wide prohibition on the manufacture of
whiskey, the two remaining Robertson County distilleries, Nelson's
Greenbrier and Pitt's Cave Spring, and all others in Tennessee
went out of business, although some tried to conduct sales through
retail and manufacturing activities in other states.

Only two Tennessee distilleries would revive after prohibition-Cascade,
later to be identified solely by the name of its distributor,
George Dickel & Company-and Jack Daniel. The Cascade Distillery
was located a few miles from Tullahoma in Coffee County, and only
about a mile from the tiny community of Normandy, on Gage Creek,
later called Cascade Springs.15 Around 1883 the distillery
was acquired by Matthew Sims and McLin H. Davis. In 1888, Sims
sold his share of the distillery to V. E. Shwab, a partner in
George A. Dickel & Company; and in 1898 the heirs of McLin
Davis sold his one-third interest to Shwab, who then became sole
proprietor of the distillery.

Cascade was never owned by George A. Dickel, but its product was
bottled and distributed by George A. Dickel and Company of Nashville.
Dickel was a native of Germany like Charles Nelson and their pioneer
predecessor, Frederick Stump. His employee, brother-in-law, and
eventual partner was V. E. Shwab, a younger man whose family emigrated
from Alsace-Lorraine. George Dickel died in 1894 and left no children.
Shwab, who was on excellent terms with his widowed sister-in-law,
Augusta Dickel, assumed complete control of the company in addition
to his ownership of the distillery.

Cascade was the largest of several distilleries located in Coffee
County. As in the case of Charles Nelson's Greenbrier Distillery,
it prospered because of marketing and distribution through Nashville,
in this case through George A. Dickel and Company. The whiskey
also became very popular with soldiers during the Spanish-American
War and its fame spread to the West Coast. There it was distributed
out of San Francisco, described by Shwab's son-in-law Paul Davis
as a "great whiskey town." In the early 1900s the company
hired the D'Arcy Advertising Company of St. Louis, which had also
begun the advertising campaign for Coca-Cola, to initiate an extensive
advertising program for Cascade. Its distinctive slogan, "mellow
as moonlight," was related to distiller McLin Davis's discovery
that the whiskey was improved by allowing the mash to cool in
the light of the moon.16

Soon after the manufacture of whiskey was prohibited in Tennessee
in 1909, George A. Dickel and Company moved its operation, first
to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and then to Louisville where it continued
in production at the famed Stitzel distillery under the direction
of V. E. Shwab's son, George, enjoying tremendous popularity until
the Volstead Act was passed in 1919.17

In 1937, eighteen years after George A. Dickel and Company had
ceased operation, Schenley, Inc., paid the Shwab family $100,000
for the company and the Cascade trademark. Fortunately the Shwabs
were able to obtain the original recipe and process from local
men in Coffee County who had distilled Cascade whiskey, and this
information was transmitted to Schenley. The whiskey Schenley
produced in Kentucky after prohibition was thought by some Tennesseans
to be an inferior brand of bourbon rather than a bona fide
Tennessee sour mash whiskey. Since 1958, however, after the passage
of appropriate legislation, Tennessee sour mash whiskey has again
been produced in a modern plant just outside of Normandy. Louisville
distiller Ralph Dupps was given the assignment of re-establishing
the Cascade Distillery, renamed the George Dickel Distillery,
near its original location and, most importantly, its original
water source.

Today the most famous, largest, and, for various reasons, most
authentic Tennessee distillery is Jack Daniel, which is located
at Lynchburg in Moore County. This distillery is in full operation
on its original site and is listed on the National Register of
Historic Places. Its founder, Jack Daniel, was born in 1848 about
five miles away from the distillery. At age twelve he went to
work for Dan Call, who operated a distillery a few miles away
at Louse Creek, and at age fourteen became a full partner with
Call, who clearly was an important mentor. In 1866 Jack Daniel
leased the famous Hollow and Cave Spring which continue to be
the focal point of the distillery's operation. At the same time
Daniel apparently was the first to reapply for a distillery license
after the war, which has been the basis of the company's claim
that it is the oldest registered distillery in the United States.
On June 17, 1884, Jack Daniel purchased the Hollow and cave, including
in all 142 acres at a price of $2,180.40 from Wilburn Hiles and
his partner Berry, owners since 1817.18

Jack was fond of his own liquor, which he sweetened with sugar
dissolved in a little branch water and garnished with bruised
tansy, and of dancing with the ladies, but he remained a bachelor
all of his life. From the age of twenty-one little Jack Daniel,
who stood just over five feet tall, invariably dressed in a knee-length
frock coat of black broadcloth and affected a high-rolled planter's
hat, fawn-colored vest, and broad bow tie, just as he appears
in the statue his nephew Lem Motlow commissioned in 1941. The
statue, the cave spring, all aspects of the distillery operation,
many of the citizens who work there, and even the ducks have been
prominently featured over the years in the modern company's advertising,
which was originally developed by the Gardner Advertising Agency
of St. Louis.19

Although Jack Daniel grew to pre-eminence over all other Tennessee
distillers, his was not an overnight success. In 1877, for example,
Tolley & Eaton was producing 300 gallons a day and Jack was
second in Moore County with 83 gallons, with thirteen other distilleries
together producing another 70 gallons. By 1896 the market for
and reputation of Jack Daniel's famous sour mash whiskey had greatly
increased, thanks in some measure to his agent, M. Ryan, in Nashville.
In 1904 Jack took a couple of cases of his whiskey to the St.
Louis Exposition, or World's Fair. The big distillers from other
parts of the country were surprised and chagrined when Jack Daniel
won the gold medal. Thereafter, Jack Daniel's whiskey won gold
medals at Liege, Belgium, in 1905; Ghent in 1913, and at the Anglo-American
Exposition in 1914, achieving world recognition on the eve of
national prohibition.20

Meanwhile, Jack had kicked his safe one cold morning when it refused
to open. He incurred such a severe clot in the arteries of his
leg that it eventually had to be amputated. After that he left
most of the management of the plant to his nephew, Lem Motlow,
who had come to work for him at age 17, in 1887. In 1907 Jack
Daniel deeded the company over to Lem Motlow and another nephew,
Dick Daniel. Two years later, Lem bought out Dick's share.21
In 1911, Jack passed away. It was Lem Motlow who saw the company
through its moves to St. Louis, Missouri, and to Birmingham, Alabama,
in an effort to escape the tightening net of prohibition. In 1933,
when national prohibition was revoked, it was also Lem Motlow
who accomplished the reopening of the modern distillery at its
original location. Lem Motlow died in 1947 and the ownership of
his distillery was continued by his sons, who operated it even
after its sale in 1956 to Brown-Forman of Louisville, also a family-owned
distillery, for $20,000,000.22

Thus today we have two survivors of a frontier industry, one of
Tennessee's first and for a time in the 1880s its leading industry,
brought here by Scots, Scotch-Irish, Irish, and, we must add in
deference to Frederick Stump, German immigrants moving west. The
prohibition movement virtually eliminated not only the product,
but also modern awareness of the industry's extent and scope before
prohibition.

The re-emergence of Tennessee distilleries after prohibition is
in both cases one of modern business involving politics, advertising,
and acquisition by larger companies from outside the state. The
quality of the product was upheld: both distilleries utilize the
leaching process through maple charcoal which is the most distinctive
characteristic of Tennessee sour mash whiskey. Advertising has
been a key ingredient for both, with Jack Daniel achieving an
almost legendary success.

Most important were the human ingredients: Jack Daniel got his
start in the pre-Civil War era and made the transition to the
new postwar economy; Lem Motlow took over the reins at the onset
of prohibition and guided the company to the modern era, passing
it on to his sons who negotiated its sale to an eminently compatible
company, Brown-Forman. George Dickel had a less sure route to
success, but fortunately George B. Shwab was able to achieve the
transfer to Schenley at the end of prohibition; then, when the
move back to Normandy was undertaken, Schenley had the right man,
Ralph Dupps, for that challenging assignment. So it is that these
two historic companies, representing a pioneer industry that started
about 1771, still provide a hint of the tastes and smells of Tennessee's
past whenever Tennesseans enjoy their Jack Daniel's or George
Dickel over ice.

NOTES

1. Henry C. Crowgey, Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years of Whiskey-Making
(Lexington, 1971), 23-24. Shelby's Station is the present site
of Bristol, in Sullivan County.

2. J. G. M. Ramsey, The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the
Eighteenth Century (Knoxville, reprint 1967), 284.

3. Ibid., 598. Stump was a member of the German community that
settled White's Creek; today his log home can be easily viewed
from the Briley Parkway.

7. Arnow, 280. She writes: "My own conclusion is that, though
consumption of alcoholic beverages was heavy, there was among
the Cumberland pioneers during the years 1780-1803 not only much
less alcoholism than today, but even less than in most states
during this same period."

8. A. W. Putnam, History of Middle Tennessee: or, Life and
Times of General James Robertson (Knoxville, reprint 1971),
237.

9. Herbert Asbury, The Great Illusion: An Informal History
of Prohibition (Garden City, 1950). See pp. 3-12 for a discussion
for the period 1750-1840, which he describes as "the most
intemperate era in American history."

14. The Four Mile Law was the device through which anti-saloon
leaders achieved prohibition; it outlawed the sale of liquor within
four miles of any chartered institution of learning outside an
incorporated town. In 1887 it was amended to include rural public
schools, and in 1909 it was extended to all parts of the state.
See Eric Russell Lacy, "Tennessee Teetotalism: Social Forces
and the Politics of Progressivism," Tennessee Historical
Quarterly XXIV (Fall 1965): 224, 229.